Meeting the Mark: How to Deliver Feedback Your Team Actually Expects

You might recognise some of the following “myths” about Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) and that they are somehow “different” ie:

– Wanting to make a positive difference in the world with their work,
– Seeking personal meaning through work,
– Valuing work-life balance,
– Valuing learning and growth over remuneration.

As you’d expect, research has found that Millennials are no different from everyone else; we are all pretty much the same with respect to our alignment (or otherwise) with the above statements.

The research report “Workforce 2020 – The looming talent crisis” surveyed more than 2,700 leaders and 2,700 employees from 27 different countries and they did uncover a couple of key differences about Millennials.

However, it seems that Millennials:

• Value formal training and mentoring more than previous generations,
• Want more feedback from their managers than previous generations. 

Only 46 percent agreed that their managers delivered on their expectations for feedback. Here are some suggestions to ensure you deliver on your team members’ feedback expectations.

Make performance visible

Use software dashboards to make each person’s goals and tasks clearly visible – not only to the individual, but to everyone else on the team.

Once these goals and tasks have been negotiated and agreed with each team member, they should be made public so everyone on the team can get real-time visual feedback on what each person is working on, and how well each person is tracking.

Follow up

Making performance visible is a huge help, but it’s just the beginning. Dashboards don’t absolve the manager of their obligation to coach and support their people. I have a saying, “Successful business execution is 20 percent getting clear about what needs to be done, and 80 percent following up to make sure it actually gets done”.

Praise good performance

Recognition and praise is best delivered in the environment where the actual performance occurred, ideally among the person’s peers. Alternatively, if you are on a virtual team, make sure to notify the team that you have delivered your praise. Let the whole team know when someone is doing a good job – whether it is hitting their numbers, or getting their key tasks done on time.

Coach poor performance

It’s not fun, but it has to be done. Problems seldom fix themselves. If you allow poor performance to persist without providing honest feedback and taking visible action to improve the situation, the manager is implicitly saying to the entire team that, “Poor performance is OK around here”.

If you allow poor performance to be the norm, a culture of mediocrity develops.

Ask coaching questions

If someone is struggling, talk to the non-performer in a non-threatening and supportive way and ask the following three questions, e.g. “I see the number of sales appointments you booked last week is ‘in the red’ again…

1. What’s happening here?
Allow the employee to respond. There may be valid reason for something not getting done.

2. What action can we take this week to move this forward?
Let them come up with solutions first. Then suggest others.

3. What support do you need?
Make it clear that you are on their side and that your role is to support your team members to be successful.

Work together to identify tangible actions and capture them as tasks. Follow up next week to ensure these tasks are completed and assess their impact on performance.

Both parties need to know that this same question sequence must occur every week whenever any performance issues are identified (e.g., goals not being met / tasks not getting done).

Coaching outcomes

If the person makes the necessary improvements, praise and recognise their progress and make them feel like the winner they are. 

If, however, they are habitually falling short and can’t make the necessary improvements within an agreed time frame, then it is your role as a manager to do something about it.

Using the “manager as coach” analogy, you only win when your team succeeds. Your job as a manager is to select, train, coach and support a team of winning players.

If someone is unable to perform on your team, you either:

– Coach them to meet the standard,
– Find them a new position where they can meet the standard,
– You owe it to the rest of the team to remove them from the field.

Being a manager (coach) means giving people regular feedback on their performance. If you aren’t comfortable with this, you shouldn’t be managing people.